Many good natured cries of "ALL IN' saw the DiPPs prize pool raise to in excess of £500. Many prizes were won, Guy took home the trophy for the second year running but DiPPs was the ultimate winner. Huge Thanks to Annabelle, Miles, Janie, Gareth, Jolyon, Georgie, Kate, Richard, Anna, Stuart and James.

May 2017

Lovely Zoe Brotherstone, has taken up the challenge of the colour run to raise money for DiPPs.

Good luck Zoe - we can't wait to see the pictures of the new multicoloured Zoe.

Find Zoe's Fund Raising Page here

1st May 2017

Arline, Dave and Katie were invited to attend Welwyn Garden City FC youth tournament on bank holiday Monday. It was a real opportunity to talk to football players and their supporters about the importance of defibrillators and to give people an opportunity to practice their hands only CPR.

Lots of our lovely wrist bands and key rings were snapped up and we finished the day by donating our 9th community defibrillator to the club.

Thanks for having us, we were made to feel very welcome by your friendly, community club

Friday 24th February 2017

We were delighted to have been chosen as the beneficiary of the Prospect House School quiz night. Prospect House do an enormous amount for local charities and they took a chance on us when we were a brand new charity, clutching a still damp registered charities number.

Last night they gave us an audience to talk about James and the importance of defibrillators, as the people present were almost entirely parents they really understood the horror of losing a beloved child. The response was phenomenal, and the quiz night raised in excess of £3,000

We cannot thank the parent/teacehr organisation PROFS and the parents and staff of Prospect House School enough for their faith in us and also for a really fun, beautifully run event.

Did the might DiPPs Ticks team win???? Well, we thought that it would be rude to :)

Sunday 25th September

James' cousins Arden (13), Ben (11) and Ted (8) decided to sell some of their books outside of their house to raise money for DiPPs. Arden, who can rarely part with any books offered to bake and thus the DiPPs book & cake sale was born.

They created leaflets to let the local community know and emailed their friends and family. In the lead up to the event we received approximately 500 books as donations and the event began to snowball. On the day, we had to take 3 begged & borrowed trestle tables, the desk from the study, the kitchen table and the ironing board outside to accommodate all the books.

It was a fabulous day, the rain stayed away and our friends didn't! We made an incredible £614.96 which will be used to place a defibrillator into a local school or sports facility as soon as possible. Well done tiddly peeps!

Our inaugural fun and friendly football fundraiser.

James was passionate about football, so we feel hugely overwhelmed and grateful that our first DiPPs football fundraiser, on Sunday 18th September was such a huge success.

Many thanks go to the SFO Sports Centre, one of the first recipients of a DiPPs defibrillator, for providing us with the venue and their passionate expertise.

Eight teams battled for the trophy whilst their supporters enjoyed the barbecue and cakes and their youngest supporters created some amazing DiPPs mascots.

Goals were scored, blood was spilt and a good time was had by everyone. It was fitting that a team from British Premium Meats lifted the trophy and took a picture of James with them for the winners photograph.

We raised a massive £1013.21 from the tournament, barbecue and raffle, every penny of which will go towards buying life saving defibrillators.

Our heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who played and supported, to our barbecuers, bakers and cheerleaders, our artists, our roadies, our friends and family.

We are nothing without you.

Walking for DiPPs

On Sunday June 12th our DiPPS founder and trustee Arline, along with good friend Jane Thomson power walked the St Alban's Half Marathon.

This is a local event, so very close to where James was born and brought up.

It was a highly emotional walk, never more so than when, at mile 10, Arline and Jane got the text to say that they had SMASHED their original target and had raised £2,000.

The girls trained really hard for this walking event, pounding the pavements during the weeks and months that followed James' death, a time when many of us would have taken to our beds, and to drink!

They completed the entire 13.1 miles in 3 hours 17 minutes.

No walk in the park on an exceptionally soggy Sunday. We couldn't be prouder.

Saturday night saw the regular Temple-Bowles poker home game given over to DiPPs. Sixteen hardened gamblers and great friends turned out with fists full of fivers, clad in the red and white of DiPPs to wage war over the trophy to end all trophies. Special mention must go to Gareth who created and wore his very own DiPPs T-shirt.

Two tables of eight sat down to play under the dealership of Guy Bowles (red table) and Miles Tym (black table)

We shared five hours of poker, laughs, champagne, delicious food and many, many rebuys. Huge congratulations to Guy Bowles, Tony Dobson, Georgie Roberts, Gareth Atkinson, Jude Temple, Stuart Whitmore, Jerry Scott and James Scowan for making the final table through sheer class and the wearing of cummerbunds (no wait, that was just James)

I won't bore you with the bad beat story, although if I did it would be about Guy taking me (jude) down in the final when his J3 somehow managed to crack my pocket Aces? Oh you capricious poker Gods!

But play ended with Guy claiming the ultimate prize (and bragging rights)

Jude taking the second place trophy and the bad beat spoon

Gentleman James Scowan in third.

Miles Tym, dominated the losers table to win the losers pig!

But the ultimate winner was DiPPs with a finishing pot of £525

Huge thanks go the poker team for their huge generosity and show of support;

Dave Katie and Arline started Saturday with a stall at Hardings pre school family fun day thank you to Emma and the committee for allowing us to take part.

It enabled us to introduce DiPPs to the local community

We meet some lovely people and raised £80.

May 1st 2016

Arline and I had our first official DiPPs date, albeit in 1920s attire, attending the Heart4More gala dinner. This was our induction into the world we find ourselves inhabiting. We met the most amazing people including Tobi Alabi, the inspirational young man behind Heart4More and Christine & Kelly the effervescent yet down to earth founders and forces of nature at NE Hearts with Goals. It was an incredibly emotional night and we left feeling both inspired and utterly overwhelmed at the task that lay ahead of us. Most importantly, perhaps, we were amongst people who believed in us and our cause unquestionably and we were able to see for the very first time 'We represent DiPPs'

1st Defibrillator- June 2016

DiPPs hands over its first cheque. This will fund two defibrillators for Sir Fredric Osborn School and the associated Sports Centre.

Sir Fredric Osborn was James' Secondary school and is his sister Katie's current school. This was always intended to be our first project and we are grateful to have the support of the senior management team at SFO.

2nd Defibrillator-June 2016

DiPPs hands over two defibrillators to Sir Fredric Osborn school. We had always planned for this to be the location of our first

AEDs as James was a student at this school, and his sister Katie still attends.